One day conference
Liverpool John Moores University
Conference organiser: Dr Nedim Hassan (Chief Editor Metal Music Studies)
Friday 4th September 2026
Scenes and survival: building sustainable futures for local metal music scenes is a joint academic and industry conference that seeks to explore how contemporary metal music scenes develop strategies for sustenance and survival. Its setting is Liverpool, a UNESCO designated city of music since 2015 and a place renowned for producing live music scenes. Despite this status, Liverpool’s metal music scene has often been overshadowed by the region’s heritage-based narratives that have mythologized other scenes such as Merseybeat and the dance scene of the 1990s (Cohen, 2007). In a music city overdetermined by dominant music narratives, Liverpool’s metal scene has a seemingly liminal status. Working against this backdrop, in recent years a range of stakeholders have laboured to establish a live metal music scene that has been understood by some to involve a struggle to establish its cultural legitimacy (Hassan, 2021; Metal on Merseyside 2022).
The industrial partner for this event is Black Label Production, a global promoter and extreme metal music label based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Sil Khannaz, one of the most influential metal bands from Malaysia, who were formed originally in 1987, will be participants at the conference. Vocalist Jaie Jokhannaz will provide a unique keynote address at Scenes and Survival, reflecting on how there were periods in their existence when musicians like him were condemned by authorities as ‘Satanic’ and largely driven underground (Ferrarese, 2015). Yet he will also be able to speak to how cultural legitimacy has shifted over time and how more recently metal artists like their contemporaries Black Fire have been reconceptualized as ‘legitimate’ cultural representatives.
To complement their appearance at Liverpool John Moores University, Sil Khannaz will also headline the second edition of the KL Metal Mayhem (UK edition) festival at ARC:HIVE on Saturday 5th September, a venue based near the Red Brick market in the popular Baltic triangle area of Liverpool. The festival will also feature a range of upcoming metal bands from the north-west region.
Scenes and Survival will, therefore, foster a distinctively cross-cultural platform to examine aspects of live music production, how music scenes can survive during adversity, and what sustainability entails within contemporary metal music scenes. Proposals for 20-minute paper presentations that broadly relate to these themes are invited from academics, musicians and industry stakeholders.
Participation in the conference is free of charge and lunch and refreshments will be provided. All participants will also have an opportunity to gain free entry to the KL Metal Mayhem festival (UK edition) in Liverpool on the evening of Saturday 5th September.
Please submit proposals of no more than 250 words via email to Dr Nedim Hassan (N.A.Hassan@ljmu.ac.uk) by 5pm on Friday 31st July 2026
Please include a paper title and short (100 word) biography